The Spiders
by The Illustrious Crackpot
Summary: A oneshot attempt at a LOZ horror story, taking place during Ocarina of Time.


The Spiders

(The Illustrious Crackpot)

The darkness deepened around Kakariko Village like a midnight blanket thrown over a bed. The mournful howling of wolves filled the ears of onlookers, though there were none out of their houses. They were all safely, and perhaps fearfully, snuggled in their own beds. Because tonight, only one person dared to enter the darkness that lurked out of doors.

The youth called Link crept around the town like a shadow in the deepest of fog. Blonde hair masked the wary young face of the traveling boy. As a stranger in the town of Kakariko, he had no place to stay for the night. And besides, there was a curiosity, as well as a mission, behind his presence. While he wandered the village, always he was drawn back to that spot, the old dilapidated house on the hill.

Link swallowed, but no fear was betrayed in his glittering blue eyes. He had to go in. He'd been chased away from the house all daybreak by the villagers. They hadn't wanted him to go in. They'd refused to allow him near it. They were hiding something about that house. They had been talking about it in lowered voices, and whenever he arrived they would immediately change the conversation for him. Not even the old graveyard by the village was whispered about so hushedly, and Link already knew what lie inside _there_. No; it was no good. He couldn't wait 'till dawn. He'd already stalled too long as it was.

Inhaling deeply, Link loosened his sword in its sheath and quietly creaked the door open. Holding his wooden shield up protectively, he crept into the one-room house. It was old and musty, but empty as well. Link relaxed when he'd bypassed the threshold. It was only an abandoned, rotten house. There was nothing for him to do here. Shaking his head irritably, he reached for the still-open door to let himself back out.

"_Groan_..."

Link moved back, eyes wide with terror. The door behind him swung shut of its own accord, locking with a smart _click_. He was trapped in the old room. Pushing his locks behind his thinly pointed ears, he looked around for a window for him to get out of. There was none. His heart sped up until the palpitations seemed to drown out all the noises around him—all the noises, that is, except for the groaning, which only grew louder and louder until the echoes bounced hauntingly against the four box walls of the singular room.

As Link watched in horror, one by one the spiders dropped...

Huge, writhing spiders crawled out of the woodwork of the house itself, spiders almost as big as Link with human skulls for bodies. Their alternately striped legs wriggled menacingly, saying to Link in an unspoken language, _"You cannot get out...you cannot get out...you cannot..."_ The spiders were everywhere, groaning in chorus with each other, a morbid harmony that spoke of nothing but death itself, and the darkness and decay that had brought those selfsame spiders to life.

A single scream pierced the night as a knife cuts through butter, and the denizens of Kakariko, unconscious but _knowing_, huddled their bedclothes further around them and willed the fear to leave their shaking frames.

Hours later, as always must be, the roosters crowed the dawn into the world. Sleepy-eyed, the villagers, drawn together by shared awareness, congregated around the house. The house that they had never wanted to see, not in the light of dawn or any other time, glowing with such an aura of smug satisfaction, telling them _"Step forth and see the horror that has been brought down on you."_

A small, thumbnail-sized scrap of green clothing clung to the doorframe for dear life...the dear life that, the villagers knew, had just been lost to its owner Link. No longer would he be bothered with it anymore.

The house settled back in itself as the villagers went back to their everyday work. The house knew that they would soon forget that the young traveler had ever been in Kakariko at all. _Every_ time they had forgotten, just as they had always remembered to stay clear of the house.

After all, there's just something morbid in the given name "_The House of Skulltula_".

—End?—


End file.
